"Areas suitable for growing premium wine grapes could be reduced by 50 percent -- and possibly as much as 81 percent -- by the end of this century, according to a study Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The paper indicates increasing weather problems for grapes in such areas as California's Napa and Sonoma valleys.

The main problem: An increase in the frequency of extremely hot days, according to Noah Diffenbaugh of the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University."

of interest to me:

"A thousand years ago when Viking explorers arrived on the coasts of eastern Canada and New England they named the region Vinland, a designation that has perplexed many historians since grapes are uncommon there now.

The weather was warmer then, however."

why? cause LI is not that far from New England, just across the 'pond' as a matter of fact.

If sea levels rise than California should be ok casue the wine region will be closer to the coast. I'm not in a global warming panic. The earth was onced covered with water. Been out digging for clams in the Livermore Valley so I know where the sea level has been. So is that rising or returning to previous levels?

One subtle erroneuos point in the article is when it states the problem with the Northern wine regions being humid. The Northwest regions in Washington State and British Columbia are about as far from humid as you can get. They are nothing but Dry, Dry Desert. So I guess guess global warming will actually be good for Washington wines!

Yeah, one of the little-known facts of early American "discovery" and exploration is that the Norwegian settlers on Greenland had to make regular trips to Baffin Land and Labrador for timber to build places to live in Greenland because of the lack of trees.